Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise

Day 22 & 23 – Dear teenage me

Day 22 & 23 of 31 day blogging challenge

Dear Teenage Laura

Dear Laura,

You had the right idea when you were young. You wanted to stay true to yourself, you just hoped that the real you was super cool. The way you went about being you was by trying to be different. You purposely would swim against the current and strategically insert yourself into a friendship group that best reflected who you wanted to become. You thought a lot. Maybe a lot more than other kids. How can I be seen as beautiful? How can I be seen as popular? How can I get all the boys to notice me?

After a while you figured this incredibly vain fantasy wasn’t going to happen for you at school. So you recalculated. You figured I may not be the head girl but I can become the girl who everyone knows. So that’s what you did. You were a part of everybody’s friendship group and loved having the opportunity in many conversations to say ‘oh yeah I know him, he’s a friend of mine.’ This was your way to be cool. This was how you would stay relevant. You never looked deep into yourself and asked why are you like this? In fact this is the first time you are letting yourself acknowledge this at all.

So why? And when did you grow out of this incredibly mysterious and strategic behaviour. Because it just didn’t matter. You realised as many friends that you have, you only had a few true friends. Ironically most of which you met during the first couple years at school. You began to understood that people saw you the way they wanted to and all the strategy in the world wouldn’t change that. On the last day of year 11 when you went around signing each others shirts the crashing realisation that you were never going to win this popularity race was finally known to you. Your shirt and your book was bare, signatures of only the closest friends who were there from the get go. You weren’t even invited to the race let alone in it.

That was okay, you had some of the best years of your life in secondary. You left armed with only a few friends who you knew were going to be in your life forever. You realised that your social life is supposed to be carefree. You now strategise your next steps at work. You know where you want to be when your 30 and you have the detailed plan as to how you going to get there.

Above all you are now 100% yourself, all the time. You realised you don’t need to try to be different. Just be who you are. That’s what you do. I don’t blame you for any of your short comings you had when you were a teenager. You were incredibly insecure, you hadn’t realised the need for self-love and positivity. I thank you for the lesson I’ve learnt. I thank you for your inquisitive nature, rebellious spirit and finding people who are now my family. You were fearless but careful. You couldn’t be pushed into doing anything you didn’t want to do. Whenever you were asked that question that sends shivers down my spine now – ‘what do you want to be when your older?’ , you’d smile and say ‘I just want to do something that I love, whilst wearing some nice shoes.’

That’s still the dream. I will one day save up enough to get my own flat and Loubitons and toast to accomplishing little Laura’s dreams.

You still have a few insecurities, nobody is perfect right. You are working on it. Your motto now is trust the journey. You believe in yourself now as much as you believed you could be a lead singer of a rock band, which you were! As I said – fearless, you’d never do that now!

You sometimes used to let your insecurity and thirst for beauty and popularity guide you. You dropped this and just began believing in yourself. You made some life time friends and are equipped with a Mary Poppins style bag full of lesson you learnt.